CONFESSION KEY TO MURDER TRIAL'S 1ST DAY

Sharon Murray and Richard Allport were divorced, but they still had what they called their "magic spot" in a heavily wooded area of Wheaton.

It was there, Murray acknowledged, that she and her former husband often met for secret trysts.

Prosecutors say she used the "magic spot" to conceal another secret: When she met her former husband there July 24, they quarreled and she stabbed him in the heart at least 13 times.

His body was found two days later.

Murray, who once confessed to police, now denies she killed him.

According to prosecutors' opening statements in Murray's murder trial Wednesday, Allport, 41, did odd jobs but usually was out of work, drinking heavily and living where he could in the Wheaton area. He and Murray married in 1991 but divorced the following year.

Murray, 41, remarried in early 1996 and moved to Plano. But it was not long before she and Allport got back in touch and began meeting in Wheaton-area restaurants and taverns. Then they would go to their secret place, secluded on the fenced-in 43-acre grounds of the Theosophical Society in northwestern Wheaton.

Allport "had a hard life and he had a hard death," Assistant DuPage County State's Atty. Phil Collins told a jury in the Wheaton courtroom of Judge Thomas Callum.

Allport's body was found by teenagers playing in the area, Collins said. An autopsy indicated that his throat had been slit. He had been stabbed 13 to 27 times in the heart and three times in the back, and his hands and arms bore several possible defensive wounds.

Collins said that during Murray's first several interviews with Wheaton detectives after the body was found, she said she had not seen her former husband for about a year.

But, Collins said, after giving several conflicting statements, Murray "hung her head and cried" as she admitted that she had seen Allport about 20 times in the previous month and that she had committed the murder.

"She took police on a tour of the grounds, to a place she called their magic spot, and showed how the crime occurred," said Collins. "She said they had a fight, an argument about their future.

"At one point, she said she grabbed the knife from him and fought in self-defense. But later on she said she brought the knife with her, slit his throat from behind, threw him on the ground, jumped on top and continually stabbed him in the heart."

Her defense attorney told the jury Murray's confession was untrue.

"This was a grisly murder," defense attorney Richard Melton said, "but we dispute that she was the killer.

"Wheaton police coerced her over the course of their numerous interviews into believing that she killed him. She told them what they wanted to hear, prompted by things she heard from the police."

Melton said there is no physical evidence linking Murray to the scene. No murder weapon was ever recovered, the defendant had no blood on her clothes, and no one saw her in the area the day of the crime.

"She wasn't there and she couldn't have done it," said Melton.

The trial is expected to take about a week and the jury has been told that prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty. If convicted, Murray could receive a prison sentence of 20 to 80 years.